Social Class And Family Inequality In The American Family

Social class is a defining concept to each typical American family as it characterizes their place in society. It is important to use a structural diversity framework when demonstrating how class variation produces different social opportunities for each family. Structural conditions, such as class, race, and gender, all affect families differently, and create diverse family arrangements depending on their structural location. According to Maxinne Baca-Zinn in the textbook, Diversity in Families, using a structural perspective to study the stratifications associated to families demonstrates class, race, and gender all “foster group-based inequalities, are systems of subordination that shape family life and also place the family as a resistance

Many would say Americans spend more on things they do not need than families did on the past. With a steadily increasing housing market and education becoming more and more important to the social class level of a person, however, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi argue against this notion by saying families only spend more on providing a home with a safe neighborhood and good school district in order to ensure a better future for their children. As they both say in Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke, “For most middle-class parents, ensuring that their children get a decent education translates into one thing: snatching up a home in the small subset of school districts that have managed to hold on to a reputation of high quality and parent confidence” (Warren 406). Because of this rising need for a good education, as the economy shifts and causes housing prices to rise, parents must find new ways to create an income in order to provide. Warren and Tyagi would argue this caused a “bidding war,” and parents began the now common concept of a second income; “By the early 1980s, women’s participation in the labor force had become a significant factor in whether a married couple could buy a home” (Warren and Tyagi 409). As stated previously, for middle class families this second family income is the new common dynamic within social class rankings. Not everything is based on consumption, one may argue today parents would do anything to provide for their children, which makes families in lower social classes have a harder time as they cannot afford to live in the scarce housing communities with good schools that may provide a better future for their